MEET THE TEAM!

Luna’s activities are supported by a number of volunteers with specialist skills, without whom our work would not be possible. We name and thank them all in our Annual Reports: Annual Report and Accounts 2015

Here are our current team of Trustees who have responsibility for the development, management and governance of Luna, and also a profile of our founder and Licensor, Dr Carlotta Raby.

Stella Charman – Executive Chair of Trustees

Stella is an experienced health and social care manager who has worked as a consultant for fifteen years. She became Chair of Luna in 2009.

More on Stella

Stella (MA, MSc, DipHSM) joined the National Health Service in 1978 as a graduate management trainee. She then spent fourteen years as a general manager in a variety of hospital and community healthcare settings.

She established herself in 1995 as an independent management consultant and has worked primarily in the field of mental health- Institute of Applied Health and Social Policy (IAHSP) at King’s College London, Young minds Consultancy Service, Mental Health Foundation and CAMHS Consultants Ltd.

In April 2009 Stella and a number of long-standing colleagues set up ‘Health in Justice’, a UK based consultancy organisation, dedicated to improving the standards of health care (mental, emotional and physical) offered to offenders of all ages.

Jenny Dewar – Trustee

Jenny has been a Luna Trustee since 2010. She has lived and worked in Asia and Africa for over thirty years.

More on Jenny

During this period she taught English, worked as an HIV/AIDS education volunteer, a British Embassy project consultant and supported a number of charitable organisations in a variety of roles.

Jenny has a first degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, is a trained teacher and has an MSc in Development Economics.

Brenda Graham – Trustee – Safeguarding Officer

Brenda has extensive experience working in social services in the UK as a social worker, trainer, manager and independent consultant. She became a Trustee of Luna in 2014 and frequently travels with in support of our volunteers on training trips.

More on Brenda

Brenda has worked in both community and residential care settings with children and their families. Her interest in improving professional practice led her to move into a training role within a local authority. She set up as an independent consultant in 2006 and has designed and run courses for multi-agency professional audiences. She spent several years delivering joint training for children’s mental health professionals.

Brenda contributes to the Level 3 CATT programme and brings to Luna her experience of designing, running and evaluating training programmes for people in the caring and health professions.

Philip Sarell – Trustee

Philip has been a company director for many years developed Luna’s first website.

More on Phillip

Philip is a Chartered Surveyor and former company director with considerable IT experience.

As a Chartered Surveyor he has considerable knowledge of the Internet and related marketing channels. He is assisting the charity in developing its Internet profile and extending its global reach.

Anne Feeney – Trustee

Anne became a Luna Trustee in June 2016. She is a facilitator, executive coach and tutor specialising in transformational leadership and change.

More on Anne

She leverages her coaching and psychological training combined with her commercial expertise and acumen to design and deliver a wide range of client and team initiatives. Working with Corporate clients, Consultancies and Academia the common themes are sustainability, leadership and business transformation.

Victoria Burch – Clinical Trustee

Victoria is a psychologist who joined Luna in 2018.

More on Victoria

Victoria has over 30 years experience working with children with social-emotional, behavioural and cognitive difficulties, including post-traumatic disorders, associated with developmental or acquired disability. Most recently she has supported children and young people with life-limiting or terminal illness, and their siblings and families. This has included grief, trauma and resilience work. She has extensive experience of teaching and professional supervision. She is a regular visitor to the Middle East where her daughter was an aid worker for four years.

Shellee Burroughs – Clinical Operations Manager

Shellee is an Art Psychotherapist who lived and trained in Canada and the UK. She worked with child and adult sexual abuse survivors in the voluntary sector before moving to CAMHS in Exeter in 2007.

More on Shellee

Supporting trauma and PTSD survivors played a central role in her professional development and she completed her CATT Level 2 and 3 training courses before moving to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Shellee worked as a school counsellor in an international school setting providing non-verbal approaches for both primary and secondary school students.. After 4 years, Shellee has returned to the UK with a cross-cultural approach which she is continuing to develop as ‘Third Culture Kids’ (TCK’s) experience a higher level of trauma and loss than expected. Using creative approaches, Shellee continues to work in private practice in the Exeter area.

Martyn Legg – Treasurer

Martyn is an accountant who became Luna’s Treasurer in 2015.

More on Martyn

Martyn has over 30 years of finance experience obtained in organisations within various different business sectors ranging from large and small construction, insurance underwriting and a Finnish paper supplier through to a housing association and a charity.He prefers the more direct experiences of working with smaller companies and is currently the Financial Controller at a small ceramic tile wholesaler/retailer in Fulham for part of the week alongside occupying the same role at a cancer related charity in Epsom for the remainder of the week.

Dr Carlotta Raby – Luna’s Founder, Licensor and Creator of CATT

Carlotta Raby is a psychotherapist (with a specialism in PTSD) and psychologist, and Director of Trauma Psychology UK which is Licensor for Luna’s CATT activity.

More on Carlotta

Following several national children’s rights roles for Young Minds, the Mental Health Foundation and the Evidence Based Practice Unit, Carlotta created the CATT protocol (combining children’s rights with a cognitive arts based post-traumatic stress treatment) in 2005.Carlotta subsequently founded Luna Children’s Charity in order to offer mental health support and training to international organisations working with children and young people affected by war, conﬂict or natural disaster. She was clinical and research director for Luna for seven years and amongst other activities she supervised operations in Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Pakistan and Turkey. She has granted Luna Children’s Charity a licence for the purposes of international aid to train those wishing to use CATT overseas, and to train experienced CATT practitioners as trainers of others with the same aim.

Carlotta has completed a clinical Psychology Doctorate with specialist research into serious group violence, for which she was supported by the Integrated Gangs Unit as part of the UK Home Office. She is also Director of the Certiﬁcate in CBT for Children and Young People at the Institute of Child Metal Health, and is visiting lecturer at several academic institutions; teaching in ‘Treating Post Traumatic Stress’, ‘Children’s Rights’, ‘Children’s Rights Law and Mental Health’, and ‘CATT’. She is a member of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (where she is on the Children’s Trauma Task Force) and the UK Psychological Trauma Society. She is an Honorary Research Associate with Rhodes University. Research, publication and policy advising roles have all related to PTSD treatment in children and young people, and children’s voices with in mental health services.

The Story of Luna

Luna Children’s Charity was founded in 2008 by psychotherapist and psychologist Dr Carlotta Raby. The Charity was established in response to the great need evident in post-genocide Rwanda for a child-centered approach to trauma therapy. Carlotta’s work in Rwanda had already highlighted the fundamental importance of treating the effects of trauma on children and young people, whose lives had been torn apart by violence and conflict.

Here’s how it all began…

Whilst advocating for the rights of young people with mental health difficulties in the UK in 2005, Carlotta became involved in direct project work with a group of traumatised children and young people in London. This diverse group had all suffered abuse or neglect and came from households where domestic violence was ever present. The children and young people were regarded as untreatable by existing services and it soon became clear that a new approach was very much needed!

Carlotta offered these children emotional support and mentoring whilst listening carefully to what they had to say about their lives. Through her daily interaction and investment in these children and young people Carlotta showed that a more holistic, integrated arts and play methodology was necessary in order for them to feel comfortable enough to talk about and process their feelings and past experiences.

As a consequence of this finding and with the help and input of the children and young people she was working with, Carlotta developed Children’s Accelerated Trauma Technique (CATT): a therapeutic play/arts based technique that allowed children to talk about their experiences in a contained environment, process the traumatic memory and then re script it in order to feel more positive and empowered to move on with their lives.

“Carlotta Raby has taken many elements, that have now been shown through research to be effective and necessary in a PTSD treatment, and created a therapy that can easily be applied with children and young people worldwide”

– UK therapist & CATT trainer Robin Bennett.

CATT in Rwanda…

The next step for Carlotta and CATT came in 2006 when she was invited to go to Rwanda. A course had been set up to teach trauma counselling to a local Rwandan NGO (REACH Rwanda), who worked in communities on peace and reconciliation post-genocide. The NGO had specifically requested support in treating traumatised children. Carlotta travelled to Rwanda and shared CATT with an overwhelmingly positive response from participants.

Carlotta’s second visit to Rwanda was also incredibly successful, with even the children’s workers staying up late into the night talking about their own experiences for the first time since the genocide. The word of CATT was out and the need for more training was too great for one person to accommodate! When invited to return to Rwanda for a third time, Carlotta decided the most effective way of sharing CATT was through a training model that could be monitored, evaluated and taught by trained trainers…

Luna Children's Charity

Cookies Policy

We use Google Analytics cookies in order to evaluate your use of the website and compile reports for us on activity on the website. You can learn about Google Analytics cookies by visiting this site: Google Analytics Privacy Policy

Luna Children's Charity

(Reg. Charity No. 1172010)

was formed in December 2008 and became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in April 2017.